The new rules of wine

Pink champagne isn't just for bridal showers and what's all this fuss about temperature?

You chill your whites but not your reds, pair your fancy bottles only with fancy food and skip right past the pink champagne. Guess what: You’re doing wine all wrong. We talked to the best sommeliers, vintners and career winos around to write the book on this fermented-grape-juice thing.

1.Dont worry If you didn’t pick up those subtle hints of “kaffir lime”, “black currant confiture” and “the sweet stemminess of burning vine clippings” when you stuck your nose into the glass. Take a look at two different tasting notes for the same bottle of wine – same vineyard, same vintage, two different critics. They almost never taste or smell the same stuff. Which is to say – your guess is as good as theirs. So, drink. Decide what you like. And if you detect a hint of quince paste in your Sauvignon Blanc, keep it to yourself.

2. For the love of god, don’t sniff the cork. Ask yourself: What are you looking for?

3.We’d love to say you can drink wine out of anything. We can’t. Because glasses matter. Good wine needs space to roam. Drink your Châteauneuf-du-Pape out of a Mason jar and the wine won’t aerate and won’t express its fullest character. You don’t need varietal-specific stemware – just a universal glass for red and another one for white.”– Helen johannesen, Beverage Director, animal and son of a gun restaurants, LA

4.Break out of your wine rotation Most oenophiles are like coaches who stick to super-tight rotations and leave legitimate talent to languish on the bench. Your Pinots and Cabernets get tons of playing time, but Riesling? Rarely takes off its warm-ups. This is a waste of great wine – and no way to live your life. So shake things up .

5.Wine and Indian food The first thing to realize is that there’s no such thing as ‘Indian food’. The fact that we have a variety of cuisines, each with a diverse application of spices and cooking techniques, means that the range of wine topair is limitless. Also, we don’t eat int raditional Western courses, so it’s better to choose a holistic path to pairing rather than a more precise or narrow approach. The idea is to pair the overall richness of a dish. This way, even a vegetarian dish can be paired with a red wine, if it has a rich gravy.

My favourite grapes among the whites include Grüner Veltliner from Austria, and the lovely wines from the Riesling grape, be it from Germany, Austria or even Australia. Oaked Chardonnays from Australia, as also South America. and South Africa, work wonders with a tandoor-cooked preparation, like a malai tikka, for example.

Among the reds, Pinot Noir is a great choice as it manages to be textured without being overbearing, thereby pairing well with most spicy dishes. The richer wine styles, like Cabernet or Shiraz, are best reserved for kebab courses.

In the end, if you like the wine and the dish, and neither distracts from nor reduces the enjoyment of the other, then you have a winner: think of it not as a traditional food–and–wine marriage, but a successful live-in liaison.”– Magandeep Singh

6. Pink champagne ain’t just for bridal showers Men and pink? When it comes to champagne, the answer is a definite yes! A Rosé champagne, beyond being glamorous and seductive, is a serious wine – well-structured and emphatic, given the greater influence of Pinot Noir. It works beautifully as an apéritif, and pairs well with foods that unveil the notes of the wine: drink it with grilled shellfish, thin-sliced reddish scarpaccio grilled or pan-seared red meat, sun-ripened vegetables and fresh berries.”– Gaurav Bhatia, MD, Moët Hennessy INDIA

7. That cheap corkscrew sponsored by some spirit company that you got from a local liquor store? It’s the only one you’ll ever need.

8. And at a pinch, a corkscrew isn’t even necessary. Click here to see how to open a wine bottle with a shoe.

9.Enough already withthe phone-book-sizedwine list Oh, you have every Gaja vintage since 1961 on your reserve list? Who cares? It’s the oenophile’s equivalent of name-dropping, because me and those Barolos are not going to meet in person, at least not at your 300 per cent markup. A menu tells you something about the chef, and the same should be true of a wine list and the sommelier. So, make some choices. We’d rather see a focused, self-assured one-pager than a tome that takes all night to read. Throw in a bottle of indie champagne, if you must, and one trophy Barolo for the guy who got his bonus. But don’t give us 11 pages of wines that most of Monaco can’t afford to drink with dinner. We don’t use the Yellow Pages, either.– Stan Parish

10. And finally, what’s all the fuss about temperature? The question isreally about getting wines to the right temperature, rather than a simple division of what to chill in the fridge and what to leave out on the sideboard. Whites are generally served between 5-11° Centigrade. At the lower end, you have champagne/sparkling wine at about 7-8°C, and high up at 10-11°C you have the richer whites – Australian Chardonnay and white Châteauneuf-du- Pape to name but two. Reds are typically served from 12-18°C, with French Beaujolais at the cooler end, and dry Bordeaux and Burgundy ideal at 17-18°C.

As for India, well, 22°C is considered fairly cold in much of the country. So even with the AC on, it’s advisable to put reds in the fridge for a few minutes.Why all the fuss?– Myles Mayall, Head of wines, Wine society of India